Sheila Rae, the Brave

In our book, Sheila Rae, the Brave written by Kevin Henkes, we meet a mouse named Sheila Rae and her sister Louise who are polar opposites. Sheila Rae is not afraid of anything and is quite honestly, a daredevil. Louise, on the other hand, is very quiet and afraid of nearly everything. Like most siblings, these two deal with plenty of sibling rivalry. It takes something happening to Sheila Rae that was so scary that even Sheila Rae was scared, for the sisters to decide that loyalty and love could be better than sibling rivalry.

We would use this book to help teach the reading comprehension strategy of making text to self connections. Text to self connections involve a reader reading a passage or story and picking out different ways that they can relate to the story. Not everyone will relate to the story the same way and the students can be given the opportunity to share their feelings and work collaboratively to gain a better understanding of the book.

The way we would choose to teach this lesson would be to read the book first as a teacher and come up with ways that we as teachers can relate to the book. (We would make sure that they were appropriate for students to hear.) Then we would read the book aloud to the students, encouraging them to use post-it notes while they are listening to make notes of the ways in which they relate to the book. At the end of the story, the students would be allowed to come to the front and place their post-it notes on a large sheet of paper. The teacher could then take the paper home and look over it. She could write out any of the questions the students may have had or the ways that they related to the book and discuss it in a group setting the following day. A side advantage to this, would be that teachers would have a glimpse into the home lives of students (depending on the book being discussed) and could speak to a student based on that knowledge or refer the student to the appropriate person for help.